Page 62 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
Seeing Dad’s face, she adds, “I’m not making a run for it: I’m going into the bloody garden for one of Shippy’s secret bloody cigarettes, and don’t even try to tell me you don’t have any, Shippy, because I don’t want to hear it.
“Dylan?” Bec is looking at her son, who hasn’t moved. “Will you come outside?”
He stands up but shakes his head. “You are unbelievable.”
“Dylan,” she says quietly, “we can talk in the garden.”
But Dylan goes the other way: out of the kitchen and toward his bedroom. We all hear the sliding door bang shut, and the only shock here is that we don’t also hear the door fall off its tracks and add to the death count.
It’s a relief when Bec and Shippy disappear to the garden.
“Are you sure they’re okay out there?” Aunty Vinka asks.
“They’re not going anywhere without Dylan. Anyway, they don’t have a car.” Dad turns to me. “Are you okay, Ruthie?”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m sorry you had to see all that. I should have sent you upstairs.”
“Stop trying to send me upstairs.”
“Ruth, you’re a kid.”
“I’m fourteen.”
“What point do you think you’re proving?”
“I’m the one who found the letter.”
“I realize that.”
“You wouldn’t even know about Bec’s lie without me.”
“I also realizethat.”
A little bit of my frustration at being constantly excluded and my disappointment at not having figured out yet who killed GG explodes in my dad’s direction. I’m not shouting, exactly, but my voice is loud enough to wake if not the dead, then maybe Rob from his coma.
“I’m just sick of being kept in the dark about everything.”
“Ruth, you’re…” Dad takes a deep, slow breath, and I’m pretty sure he’s counting to ten in his head, the way his anger-management book advises. Maybe even twenty. “I know you feel grown-up, and I’m sorry if I didn’t give you enough credit for finding that letter.”
An apology! Almost unprecedented.
“It’s okay.”
“Do you think Bec’s telling the truth about Gertie leaving her in the will and not wanting to tell any of us about it?” Aunty Vinka asks Dad.
“Bec can be ruthless. But GGdidn’ttell us about the DNA test or any of it, even though she had the opportunity. So…maybe?” He looks at me, and I’m just waiting for him to send me away when he says this instead: “What do you think?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. What do you think, Ruth? Don’t pretend you don’t have an opinion.”
I think about the Case of the DNA Letter and what Dad is really asking.
“I think it’s possible that Bec and Shippy might have…hurtGG to protect their secret,” I say slowly. “Shippy is the only one of us who might have driven GG’s jewelry up to Perth. He was also up late the night GG died, at least I think he was—I saw someone smoking in the garden.”
Dad and Aunty Vinka swap a look, but I can’t tell if it’s of thewe need to get this kid to a psychiatristvariety or if it has more of awe are impressed despite ourselvesvibe.
